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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Coronavirus

The Spoon team is working hard to bring you the latest on the impact of COVID-19. Bookmark this page for our full archive on the pandemic and how the food industry is embracing innovation to fight back.

On April 6th, The Spoon had a full day virtual summit on COVID-19 strategies for food & restaurants. You can watch all the sessions from our virtual strategy summit here.

You can also check out this COVID-19 resource page for food and restaurant industry.

Food Tech Intelligence Brief: Will COVID-19 Mean A Lost Generation of Kitchen Tech?

Welcome to the Spoon Plus Weekly Intelligence Brief. Each week I’ll dissect trends that are unfolding in the world of food tech.

We’ve read a lot over the past two months about the loss of restaurants. Some prognosticators suggest that up to 75% of independent restaurants could permanently disappear.

While the pandemic’s impact on restaurants will continue to be massive and will undoubtedly reshape that industry’s landscape for years to come, another food-related market – appliances and housewares – could also see a dramatic impact in a much different form.

First, the good news. Since quarantines have started in the US, the home appliance market has seen a surge in demand as consumers have shifted to staying and home and eating a much larger number of their meals at home.

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This graphic from NPD’s Joe Derochowski shows how overall kitchen electrics have seen a bump in absolute dollars spent as consumers buy countertop appliances to help them cook at home. Total dollar percentage change for kitchen electrics was up 22% during lockdown.

Figure 1: Percentage Growth of Home Products March 15th-April 18th (NPD Data)

But while a near-term jump in consumer purchases of countertop cooking appliances is no doubt good for the bottom line for some of these companies, the untold story is COVID-19 no doubt set back the same industry from a product roadmap perspective.

At least that’s my belief after looking at data from our COVID-19 impact survey of food and kitchen industry professionals (see the full report here) conducted in late April. I cut a slice of the data from the survey, which had 377 respondents across the food and related industries, to look at how those within the home appliance and housewares market responded.

As you’ll see from this chart, the appliance/houseware business wasn’t immune to the pandemic’s impact, with 43% indicating their company had to lay off or furlough employees (compared to 52% of the broader food industry).

Figure 2: Have you had to lay off or furlough employees due to COVID-19?

Perhaps the most significant impact in the appliance and housewares businesses is not the near-term impact on employee headcount, but a longer-term impact on company product roadmaps.

The graph below shows the results from where we asked our survey respondents whether they had to delay or cancel a product. 

Figure 3: Has your company had to delay or cancel a new product due to COVID-19?

58% of those that worked for an appliance or housewares company indicated that their company had delayed or outright canceled a new product. This compares with 45% of those who worked in other food-related industries.

Why cancel or delay? The biggest reason for respondents was lower revenue/shrinking business, with over four in ten (43%) staying this was a reason. Another big reason (respondents were allowed to pick more than one contributing factor) was the impact of COVID on potential customers (40%), while another factor was COVID-related business disruption (38%).

Other reasons stated by at least two startups in the appliance space was lost funding rounds as investors grew skittish due to the impact of COVID-19.

The aggregate data tells a story of an appliance industry that has been hit hard, but differently than restaurants and other food-related businesses. How so? Perhaps more so than non-hardware businesses, appliances, and housewares companies often plan for revenue in the coming year or years with new products that, if canceled, will undoubtedly impact their outlook. New products often take years to bring to market, and the reality is the cancellation of a future product very likely changes the outlook of the company for years.

But it’s even bigger than that. New products often represent a company’s future vision for itself. Not to be too grandiose, but in some ways canceling a product is equivalent to a company canceling or delaying a vision of their future selves.

Not that these companies shouldn’t have shifted strategies. The reality is the landscape is going to be different. Consumers will have less money. The way they buy food and how they consume food is (and already has) changed. To not change how your company navigates a landscape where the map is suddenly much different would be a breach of your fiduciary duties as a company executive.

But it’s still worth trying to understand the long-term impacts of these many altered product roadmaps. To do that, it’s worth looking at what types of products were canceled or delayed.

The table below shows some of the products listed by the respondents:

Table 1: What type of product or service did you delay or cancel due to COVID-19?

As you can see, many responses were fairly generic (“kitchen appliances” or “home appliances”). Others were more granular (“braising pan”, “beverage dispenser” or “smart garden appliance”).  Others spoke to more services-related products related to the appliance or houseware industry (“SaaS service” or “Residential kitchen designs”).

But what is most telling, to me at least, is how the language speaks to how these companies are canceling what is next. One respondent said their company is canceling a “new generation of large home appliances”. Another “postponed next version of automation product .” A third cut “new technology and product-related R&D.”

Again, we’re traversing a new world. Product roadmap adjustments are required. But I can’t help but wonder how much innovative work and progress was lost due to COVID-19. In the coming weeks, I’ll continue to evaluate how the reshaped appliance industry landscape will look and what I expect kitchen tech and food-related innovation efforts will look like as we emerge on the other side.  

Quick Thoughts

Chickens Are Hot

I wrote a couple weeks ago about how smart garden equipment was seeing a massive surge as consumers. In that post, I also mentioned that interest in backyard chicken farming was also on the rise, no doubt due to the same inclinations that led people to start buying seeds and developing plants for backyard gardens at a record rate over the past month or two. 

But the sheer jump in interest in chicken-farming related products on Amazon is worth looking at. As show in the graphic below, Amazon-related searches for backyard chicken farming related products has most definitely shot through the roof. Chick supplies? Up eight-fold. Chick starter kit? Six-fold. Interest in chick coops has tripled. 

I don’t think we’ll necessarily see tens of millions of chicken farmers, but I would definitely say the pandemic has meant chicken-farming has jumped the chasm from hipster hobby to a broader swath of the population concerned about their own food supply in what has been revealed to be, perhaps more so than they thought, a somewhat fragile food supply chain. 

As I wrote last month, consumers are thinking about food sovereignty, many for the first time in their lives, and so I expect at-home food production to continue to be a big trend going forward. 

Meal Kits 2.0?

It’s pretty easy to diagnose the reason for the demise of first-generation meal kits at this point: They were expensive and oftentimes required a lot of work for people who, at the end of the day, wanted to get food on the table at, yes, the end of the day.

But in some ways, I think the meal kit may be making a come back in products like that from Omsom, a meal-starter-by-mail service that allows you to essentially cook authentic Asian cuisine with little to no previous experience. In a way, it’s similar to the vision that ChefSteps had with their Joule-ready sauces, which I thought (and still do) think is a good idea before it became a victim of ChefSteps company-specific financial problems.

I also like Yo-Kai’s meal kit concept, even though it’s slightly different from Omsom in that the product provides the entire meal (including proteins). As you can guess by now, I love Asian food, and while I think Asian food meal kits probably are just better because Asian food is better (sorry not sorry), I think it’s more about not only being convenient and making life easier, but it’s also tapping into food passions. I’m going to be more passionate about an Asian food-by-mail offering than a more generic offering from the likes of Blue Apron or Plated.  I also like the flexibility that greater and longer shelf-stability provides me (like with Omsom), which was always a problem with Blue Apron, which always felt like a race-against-the-clock for me. 

India-based Food Delivery Service Swiggy to Cut 1,100 Jobs

Layoffs in the food delivery sector continue. Today, India-based service Swiggy said it will cut 1,100 jobs as coronavirus continues to negatively impact the on-demand food delivery sector (h/t TechCrunch). In an email to staff that was also posted to the company’s blog, Swiggy cofounder and CEO Sriharsha Majety confirmed that the the company is cutting jobs “across grades and functions in the cities and head office over the next few days”

The cuts are in response to the ongoing impact the COVID-19 pandemic has had on India’s food deliver sector as people are more wary of ordering food in for both health and financial concerns. Sources familiar with the matter told TechCrunch that Swiggy is processing less than 1 million orders per day now, compared to the almost 3 million it did before the pandemic. 

According to Majety’s email, all employees impacted by the cuts will receive at least three months of salary. They get an additional month for each year they have spent with Swiggy. The company will also provide medical and accident coverage through the end of the year.

This isn’t the the first time Swiggy has announced job cuts in recent months. At the end of April, Indian news outlet Entracker reported that the service was cutting staff and also scaling back its cloud kitchen division. TechCrunch’s sources indicate that while it’s unclear if these new layoffs are related to April’s announcement, they will happen mostly outside of Swiggy’s cloud kitchen operations.

The layoff announcement comes a little more than a month after Swiggy announced it had raised a $43 million as part of an ongoing Series I round of funding (the company has raised $1.42 billion in total).

Swiggy isn’t the only food delivery company laying off staffers in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Just last week it was reported that Swiggy rival in India, Zomato, cut 13 percent of its workforce and was asking remaining employees to take a pay cut. Over in the UK, Deliveroo cut 15 percent of its staff at the end of April. And while Eats has been a bright spot for Uber, it too is scaling back and ceasing operations in eight different countries.

It’s unlikely that Swiggy’s will be the last layoff announcement to come from food delivery companies. The entire sector is going through tumult as restaurants close down altogether, local governments impose delivery fee caps, and shady business practices continue to come to light.

Yet at the same time, food delivery has never been more important. Even though some states are re-opening after shelter in place orders, experts are warning about a potential second wave of infections. Hopefully delivery business have learned these hard lessons and will be better prepared should we need them in another emergency.

Would You Prefer to Stand in a Virtual Line When Going to the Grocery Store?

One of the ways grocery stores have dealt with the COVID-19 pandemic is to limit the number of shoppers that can physically go into the store at a given time. As a result, people are standing in a very long lines outside some supermarkets as they are spaced a socially distant six feet apart from each other.

Even with social distancing, you’re still surrounded by other people who may or may not be wearing a facemask, depending on where you live it could be hot (or cold), and everyone else in line is probably just as on-edge about the whole situation as you are. But what if you could just stay in the comfort of your own car while you wait your turn? That’s the idea behind Safe Queue, an app borne out of the IBM Call for Code Global Challenge.

Created by Los Angeles-based developer David Chura, Safe Queue is a mobile app that creates virtual lines to gain entrance into stores. Once downloaded, a user puts in the address of the store they want to go to when they are within 1,000 feet of the store, the app places them in a virtual line. A unique QR code is sent to the user along with updates about their place in line. When its (finally) their turn to go in, they present the code to store personnel who scan it for authenticity.

Having this virtual queue could be useful for people with disablities that make it difficult for them to stand for long periods of time, or for people with small children. Or for anyone who just wants grocery shopping to be a little less stressful.

At the same time, Safe Queue, and so many other things about this pandemic, highlights issues around equity and inequality. People with smart phones can wait in their cars, people without are stuck standing in line. And also, how would it work if you have a mix of people just standing in line without the app and people who do have the app. How is the place in line determined then?

Hopefully, these are issues that Chura is working on. There are plans to release Safe Queues as an open source project as well as through the Apple and Google app stores. An IBM spokesperson told me that if enough people downloaded the app, it could be used to create a grass roots-style call for businesses and governments to adopt the virtual line technology. But that seems like a bit of a stretch to me. I’m not sure how many people would download an app that wouldn’t work until enough people adopted it. It seems like something stores would have to embed into their native apps and offer to people (after working through the equity issues).

Having said that, I applaud Chura for his creative thinking in trying to solve a problem people face in this pandemic. Now we’ll just have to see if stores and consumers line up to try Safe Queue out.

Spoon Plus Deep Dive : A Conversation With Taichi Isaku on How Japan’s Food Industry is Dealing With COVID-19

This includes Japan. To learn more about what’s going on in that country, I caught up with Taichi Isaku, the CEO of CoCooking.

I’d met Isaku in 2018 when I was in Tokyo for the second Smart Kitchen Summit Japan. Speaking to me in flawless English, Isaku told me about CoCooking’s online marketplace called TABETE which sold excess restaurant food at a discount to customers in Tokyo and other big cities. You can read about the company here in a post I wrote about their seed funding.

During our chat, we talked about how restaurants are dealing with the COVID-19 crisis, including some of the new digital strategies many are employing. We also talked about how restaurants are navigating Japan’s unique legal system and how the government is dealing with the crisis. We also discussed the ways in which consumer behavior is changing in the midst of the pandemic.

This Spoon Plus Deep Dive conversation is available only to Spoon Plus subscribers. Purchase a Spoon Plus membership to get access to this exclusive content and much more.

Zomato Cuts 13 Percent of Its Workforce

Zomato, one of India’s largest third-party food delivery services, is cutting 13 percent of its workforce and requiring the rest of its employees to take a pay cut, according to the Economic Times. Not surprisingly, the moves are in response to the ongoing pandemic and its effect on the food delivery industry in that country. 

Those affected by the layoffs will receive their health benefits as well as half their salary for six months or until they find their next job. In June, the rest of the company will take a temporary pay cut to preserve as much cash as possible. The cuts are expected to be for at least six months.

In an email sent to staff, Zomato founder and CEO Deepinder Goyal wrote that the company is preparing for “things getting worse” in terms of COVID-19 and the simultaneous collapse of the restaurant industry as we know it. He noted that many restaurants in India have already shut down permanently. “I expect the number of restaurants to shrink by 25-40% over the next 6-12 months,” Goyal wrote.

Zomato’s news comes just after Swiggy, it’s chief rival in India, announced layoffs of its own, also in response to COVID-19. Swiggy cut about 1,000 jobs at the end of April, mostly in its ghost kitchen division. This came just weeks after it announced a $43 million Series I fundraise.

It’s not just India, either. Worldwide, third-party delivery services have been making cuts as business gets drastically and negatively impacted by the pandemic and country-wide lockdowns. Deliveroo cut 15 percent of its staff at the end of April. Uber has made layoffs that affect some Eats employees. The company also recently exited eight markets.

Zomato actually bought Uber’s Eats business in India for $206 million at the beginning of March, before the country went into lockdown. Goyal didn’t mention the deal in his letter, which was much more focused on outlining ways in which the company is going to save cash and prepare for things to get way worse before they get better. Seems like the rest of the food delivery industry should do the same.

Johnny Grey on the Post-COVID Kitchen: No Cabinets, Bigger Pantries, More Pleasure

With COVID keeping many of us at home, kitchens are taking on a bigger role than ever before. They’re not just the place we cook meals; they’re also our offices, a place to teach kids homework, the background of our Zoom video calls as we cook along with family.

Considering we’ve long considered the kitchen the heart of the home, it’s no surprise that they’re shifting as we spend more and more time homebound. But how will the kitchen transform to better suit our new needs during quarantine?

To answer that question we turned to Johnny Grey, a British design leader specializing in — you guessed it — kitchens. Today Grey (and a few surprise guests) joined us for our latest Spoon Virtual Event, titled The Future of Kitchen Design in a Post-COVID19 World. He talked about some of the constants of kitchen design, how to embrace the DIY, and how the kitchen is a sort of “3D timepiece.” Here are a few of the highlights:

Fewer cabinets, more pantries
If there’s one part of conventional kitchen design that Grey absolutely hates, it’s cabinets. He thinks they take up too much space in the core of the kitchen itself, which should be a more social space.

In fact, Grey’s overarching goal with kitchen design seems to be to make it a more pleasant space for gathering. To that end, he’s a big fan of kitchen islands (or peninsulas), ideally ones with adjustable heights that can go from a bar space to a dining table.

When asked what he thought we could learn from the past, Grey answered in one word: pantries. He likes a walk-in pantry because you can see things in front of you — like all those bulk bags of dry goods you bought — and you don’t have to rely on dreaded cabinets to store everything.

Where does smart tech fit in?
For Grey, smart tech does have a role to play in kitchens of the future. Specifically when it comes to two things: precision and safety. Grey also emphasized that kitchen technology can help generations age in place. If individuals can cook for themselves, he theorizes that they won’t have to move to assisted living facilities as quickly — thus keeping them home for longer.

Photo: Innit and Sharp

The kitchen as a timepiece
During the virtual event Grey unveiled a new concept he’s been working on. Called the Evening Kitchen, he explained that the kitchen has multiple different lives during each 24-hour cycle. During the day it may be an area for quick meal prep, but in the evening it morphs into a bistro, a nightclub, or even a quiet living room, depending on the circumstances. Grey calls the kitchen a sort of “3D timepiece.”

For that reason, the evening kitchen must look different than the kitchen of daytime. Grey talks about the power of lighting, which gives intimacy, as well as smell and music to transform the space. If you’re curious you can watch his video explaining the concept here.

Especially now, embrace joy
Especially now, kitchens should be a place of joy. “It should be a pleasure to use your kitchen,” Grey said. To make it pleasurable, designers should think about touch, ease of movement, and even color. They could set up places to set a chair in the sun. Consumers themselves can do a lot to improve their kitchen. “Embrace the DIY,” Grey told the audience.

Grey also urged listeners not to put too much pressure on themselves to de-clutter, especially now that the kitchen table is also a coworking space and/or classroom. “It’s not really how people can live,” he said.

Overall, it was a fascinating conversation and — bonus — you get to enjoy Grey’s soothing British accent. You can watch the full video below.

Kitchen Design in a Post-COVID World: A Conversation with Kitchen Designer Johnny Grey

Finally, don’t forget to mark your calendar for our next event on May 21st 10am PT, when Gingko Bioworks program director Sudeep Agarwala will talk about fermentation as a food tech platform.

Bye-bye, Buffet! A Look at Restaurant Reopening Guidelines Across the U.S.

With states slowly lifting restrictions on restaurants, some trends are emerging that give us a hint at what most dining rooms will look like going forward.

Some of these guidelines, like those around dining room occupancy and the banning of buffets, are what we expected. Others, like Washington State’s requirement that restaurants keep logs of customers’ names and contact info, took me by surprise and might also be harder to enforce. And still others, like California, are putting a different spin on some of the standard guidelines (more below).

For pretty much everyone, increased sanitation procedures, the wearing of face masks, and mandatory temperature checks for staff will be required for restaurants moving forward. Social distancing measures in the dining room will be the norm, too, and a number of operational changes are recommended by different states for keeping space between people. 

Here’s a quick rundown of some common trends we’re seeing across states that have reopened or are planning to in the near future: 

Reduced occupancy. Gone are the days of crammed dining rooms and trying to pack and turn as many tables as possible. Some states, like Indiana, are requiring restaurants to open at 50 percent reduced capacity. For others, that number is as low as 25 percent. California, in particular, hasn’t designated a specific percentage, but will instead determine each individual restaurant’s occupancy “based on its size.”

Reduced party sizes. Planning to celebrate your birthday with a big group of friends at your favorite restaurant? You can’t. Most states are restricting the size of dining parties to less than 10 people (Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia), and in more cases (Mississippi, New Hampshire) six or fewer. For those who want to dine with 15 of their closest friends, you may have to go virtual for the foreseeable future.

No bars. Very few states have announced any guidance around reopening bars, and many have gone as far as to say that bar areas of restaurants must remain closed for now. However, some states, like New Hampshire, are allowing temporary delivery of alcohol when it’s ordered with delivery or takeout meals. Texans, in particular, are hoping this trend continues forever.

Prioritize to-go orders. “Where practicable, take-out and curbside pick-up services should be prioritized over dine-in services,” reads Georgia’s restaurant reopening guidelines. Arizona’s (rather loose) guidelines note that restaurants should “Continue to provide options for delivery or curbside service even if a location offers dine-in.” Most other states’ guidelines have some language around encouraging takeout, delivery, curbside, and drive-thru orders. That makes the National Restaurant Association’s 2019 prediction of off-premises driving the bulk of restaurant sales in future more relevant than ever.

Reservations (should be) required. Most states are encouraging restaurants to require reservations. It’s unclear how serious this measure will be enforced. That said, with even massive QSR chains now testing reservations platforms, it’s likely most casual-dining establishments we previously walked into will require reservations made ahead of time in order to manage capacity.

Order ahead and contactless payment options. Across the states that are reopening or planning to, contactless payment options and the ability to order meals ahead is highly encouraged. This is good news for restaurant tech companies everywhere, which are madly pedaling those technologies in the hopes of remaining relevant to the front of house.

Bye bye, buffet. This one’s a no-brainer, and it’s also not a recommendation. Arkansas says they are “prohibited.” Georgia restaurants must “discontinue the use of salad bars and buffets.” 

The next steps in this reopening process will be restaurants trying out these procedures, technologies, and operational changes. It’s too soon to tell which ones will be easy to implement, which ones will be a nightmare (hi, customer logs), and if the need for new ones will arise as dining rooms reopen. Expect at least several weeks of trial and error, unexpected challenges, expected challenges, and pleasant surprises as more states reopen and the industry moves forward.

Over Sourdough? Your Next Quarantine Activity Could be Growing Meat

At this point we’re all over making sourdough, right? The needy sourdough starters, the shortages of flour… even for the fermentation-curious, it’s getting to be more trouble than it’s worth.

So for your next foodtech quarantine project, may I suggest growing your own meat?

If you don’t know where to start, Japanese company Integriculture has your back. Earlier this month the startup laid out the details of its new CulNet System; a technology that allows individuals and businesses to culture their own animal tissue.

Democratizing cultured meat has always been a goal for Integriculture founder Yuki Hanyu. In fact, Integriculture spun out of Shojinmeat, a DIY maker community focused on cultured meat founded in 2015. Interested hobbyists can already follow Shojinmeat’s guide — which is formatted to look like manga — to grow their own meat, right now.

The new CulNet system builds on Shojinmeat’s DIY framework to introduce a more sophisticated technology. It will allow everyone from restaurants to farmers to, yes, home hobbyists to grow their own animal tissue in larger quantities, with more precision.

Photo: Integriculture

Unlike Shojinmeat though, the CulNet System is not quite available yet. Integriculture is still in the R&D phase. It plans to begin licensing out the CulNet System — which includes hardware, animal starter cells, and media to feed cell growth — within the next two years or so. Until then, curious makers can still follow Shojinmeat’s guide to grow their own meat in a small scale.

Hanyu also mentioned at last year’s SKS Japan that the company was planning to release a product called Space Salt, essentially a dried version of cell culture media containing a blend of salt and amino acids, to help home enthusiasts grow their cells more easily. Hanyu said that they weren’t able to launch SpaceSalt last year because of difficulty sourcing ingredients from a factory that would give them a “legally food grade” mark. They’re still working to commercialize it.

The CulNet System is obviously geared to serious at-home makers who have the patience and motivation to tackle something like growing their own meat. But with meat processing plants closing and a meat shortage on the horizon, more and more people are taking a long, hard look at where our meat comes from.

This awareness could help accelerate consumer acceptance of new technologies like cultured meat — whether it’s made at home or by startups like Integriculture, Memphis Meats and Aleph Farms. For its part, Integriculture hosted a private taste test of their first product, cell-based foie gras, in 2019, and plans to start selling it commercially in 2021.

If growing your own animal tissue at home seems like too much work, you could always use this time to learn a new restaurant-worthy recipe, make good use of your smart kitchen gadgets, or even go all-out and develop a new connected appliance. Or just go back to yeast and make something besides sourdough.

Restaurants Re-Opening in Washington State Required to Keep a Daily Log of Every Customer

Washington state Governor Jay Inslee yesterday released the rules restaurants must follow if they want to re-open for dine-in service. Among the new requirements, restaurants must keep a daily log of all customers’ names and contact information for contact tracing purposes related to the novel coronavirus.

The new regulations are part of the Phase 2 re-opening plan for counties in the state that have met certain COVID-19 case-related criteria. So far, eight counties in Washington have qualified.

Inslee released a 13-point document outlining new procedures restaurants in the state must follow, including:

  • No bar seating
  • No parties or tables bigger than five guests
  • Only 50 percent capacity for both indoor and outdoor seating
  • Tables must be six feet apart
  • No buffets or salad bars

Additionally businesses are “strongly encouraged to require their customers to use cloth face coverings when interacting with their staff.” And though requiring staff to wear facemasks isn’t listed in the 13 points, “Cloth facial coverings must be worn by every employee not working alone on the jobsite unless their exposure dictates a higher level of protection under Department of Labor & Industries safety and health rules and guidance.”

The requirements listed above aren’t that surprising for anyone who’s been following the restaurant industry in the time of COVID-19. All these rules seem to be pretty standard for any dining room re-opening during this pandemic. The one bit that is extra is this rule:

If the establishment offers table service, create a daily log of all customers and maintain that daily log for 30 days, including telephone/email contact information, and time in. This will facilitate any contact tracing that might need to occur.

Washington isn’t the only place with this customer log requirement, Maine has something similar, as do the cities of New Orleans and Austin.

The first question that comes to mind is exactly how restaurants will go about doing this. Granted, there will be fewer people in a restaurant at any given time, but restaurants will need to implement protocols for getting the names and spellings (and contact info!) of every single member of your party or family (even the kiddos) at some point before or during your meal.

Keeping a database of customers seems like a prudent step towards stemming and second wave of the virus. But prudent isn’t necessarily the word I’d use to describe large swaths of our population right now. It’s not hard to see this issue becoming politically divisive for the protest set who might see this as treading on their freedoms.

If these types of daily log requirements spread, it’s not hard to imagine that restaurant software providers will offer it as an add-on to their existing service. As we’ve written before, companies like Toast are scrambling to demonstrate their value to cash-strapped restaurants just trying to survive.

Of course the bigger, more existential question for the restaurant industry right now is whether people will go to restaurants like they did before. If fear of the virus doesn’t keep customers away on its own, will facemasks and handing over personal information?

Hi Neighbor Turns a Shuttered Restaurant Into a Ghost Kitchen for Furloughed Chefs

San Francisco-based restaurant group Hi Neighbor is combating the current pandemic and simultaneous restaurant industry meltdown by launching a mix of virtual restaurant concepts via its new incubator program. The Hi Neighbor Incubator Series, first profiled by Eater SF, is letting furloughed chefs and bartenders start their own virtual concepts that can be ordered online by S.F. residents for pickup and delivery.

Hi Neighbor ran three restaurants before the pandemic: The Vault, Corridor, and Trestle. The group has kept all three closed during San Francisco’s shelter-in-place orders, which in turn has meant chefs of those restaurants have been furloughed. To get these employees back to work at a time when California dining rooms are still closed, Hi Neighbor partner Ryan Cole got the idea to let these chefs reinvent their existing restaurant concepts or create and launch new ones, only virtually. 

The current virtual restaurant lineup on the Hi Neighbor site includes three restaurants and one to-go cocktail concept. Korean-Californian concept JunJu and Uruguayan restaurant Ines are currently accepting orders for pickup or delivery via Caviar. Schmaltz Restaurant, which chef Beth Needelman calls “Jewish comfort food with a modern American twist” will start taking orders soon. To-go craft cocktails by AttaGirl Hospitality can be purchased with meals from any of the restaurant concepts. 

All orders are prepared in the kitchen of its restaurant Corridor, which remains closed as of now. Pick up orders can be retrieved at that location, and Hi Neighbor has even made gift cards available that are valid with any of the new restaurant concepts. 

Hi Neighbor has in effect turned itself into a kind of ghost kitchen provider, offering chefs fairly low-risk ways to test out new concepts and stay in business during the pandemic and shelter-in-place mandates. While the kitchen space and assistance setting up a virtual restaurant only extends to Hi Neighbor employees, this incubator is another example of how restaurants and restaurant groups are getting creative about doing business at a time when restaurant dining rooms remain closed.

The incubator is also notable because in normal times, Hi Neighbor’s restaurants are full-service affairs that don’t really lend themselves to off-premises formats. Full-service restaurants have taken the hardest hit in terms of lost sales as the result of sheltering in place. Asking existing chefs to either reinvent their menus or conceive entirely new ones designed for to-go orders could be a move more restaurant groups would benefit from in an uncertain time for the industry. 

Hi Neighbor plans to have incubator restaurants operate for at least the next three months, regardless of whether shelter-in-place mandates lift. It’s a wise move, considering reopened dining rooms will be operating at reduced capacity and many diners will probably remain wary of going out to eat for some time to come. 

Buffalo Wild Wings Launches a To-Go-Only Concept Store

Buffalo Wild Wings is set to unveil a new model for its sports bar/restaurant this week. The chain announced today it will open its first GO model on May 13 in Atlanta, GA, and is designed specifically for takeout and delivery orders. Depending on its success, the new store format could serve as a blueprint for other casual dining restaurants looking to transition to more off-premises-focused formats for the future.

If you’ve been to a Buffalo Wild Wings in the past, you’ll know the restaurant specializes in big dining rooms where customers pack in to watch sports games on the massive television sets that hang on pretty much every available bit of wall space there is. But thanks to the pandemic, packed sports bars are decidedly a thing of the past. Buffalo Wild Wings clearly knows this, as the chain said in the announcement it has been converting its 1,250-plus locations into versions of this to-go-only format for the last six weeks.  

The new 1,800 sq. ft. GO store in Atlanta will still have some TVs as well as limited seating where guests can wait for their orders without missing any of the game. But, as mentioned above, the store is dedicated to off-premises orders. Customers that order ahead will be able to pick up their food from heated lockers. The store will also feature a walk-up counter for placing orders. 

In a statement, Buffalo Wild Wings’ Chief Operating Officer John Bowie said that the company’s takeout and delivery business has grown over 140 percent over the last six weeks — more or less since shelter-in-place orders hit the U.S. What’s worked so far has largely informed the new GO store format.

Other popular casual dining chains will also have to incorporate more to-go-friendly formats in the coming months to meet the requirements for social distancing. Some already are. At the end of March, Outback Steakhouse announced the first U.S. unit of its fast-casual standalone concept Aussie Grill, which is basically a food court version of Outback. Shake Shack announced its own off-premises-only Shack Track stores earlier this month. Some chains, like IHOP and The Cheesecake Factory, were unrolling to-go-focused standalone concepts long before the pandemic.  

Sports bar or no, the days of crowded dining rooms are gone — possibly forever, at least for a couple of years. Pivots to off-premises-focused concepts, as Buffalo Wild Wings and others have done, will soon enough become the norm for those chains with the money to overhaul their operations. While that’s bad news for sports fans who like watching the game out, it’s good news for businesses looking for clues as to how to reimagine their restaurants in a post-pandemic era. 

PepsiCo Launches Two Sites to Deliver All the Snacks to Your Doorstep

With quarantine keeping us all at home and near our pantries, we’re buying more food staples online — and snacking more, too. So it’s no surprise that PepsiCo announced today that it’s launching two ways that people can buy snacks (and other pantry items) directly.

On PantryShop.com, consumers can order curated bundles of popular PepsiCo products with names like “Family Favorites,” “Workout & Recovery,” or, of course, “Snacking.” These bundles have goods from PepsiCo brands like Gatorade, Cap’n Crunch, and Quaker. The Standard Size for the packs costs $29.95, while the larger Family Size is $49.95.

PepsiCo also launched Snacks.com, which is even more snack-specialized. On the site people can order crackers, nuts, and dips, as well as a whole litany of chips from Lays, Cheetos, Ruffles, and more. Orders over $15 ship free.

According to an email sent to The Spoon, the majority of orders placed on PantryShop.com or Snacks.com will arrive within two business days. Obviously that’s not going to sate any chip cravings happening right now, but in a time when finding a grocery delivery spot is almost as hard as finding the golden ticket, two days is actually not that long. And considering everything that PepsiCo is sending is shelf-stable, speed is not exactly of the essence.

Considering the meteoric growth of online grocery since the coronavirus pandemic began, it’s no surprise that PepsiCo is trying to take advantage by launching its own direct sales platforms. With Instacart orders, PepsiCo is competing with other brands to get in your cart. By taking the process onto their own site, they own your purchase 100 percent.

That is, if consumers will go for it. There may be increased interest in online grocery shopping, but I’m not sure if consumers are willing to add another marketplace to their digital purchasing habits. Do people have enough loyalty to PepsiCo brands to place an entirely separate snack order on Snacks.com, as opposed to just adding a few bags of Hot Cheetos to their regular online order?

I suppose, like so many things right now, we’ll have to wait and see. If PepsiCo does see some healthy interest you can bet we’ll see other Big Food brands like Coca-Cola or Nestlé following suit with their own online marketplaces. What better to go with your PepsiCo Snack Pack then a Coca-Cola Soda Pack to wash it all down?